1. Field of the Invention
Implementations described herein relate generally to data communication and, more particularly, to communication between a client and a server.
2. Description of Related Art
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a sessionless and stateless protocol that runs over Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connections. HTTP is a serial process, such that over any one TCP connection, only one object of a web page can download at a time. Web browsers, such as Internet Explorer, normally open no more than two TCP connections to a web server. Many web pages have dozens, if not hundreds, of objects that can only be downloaded two at a time (i.e., one over each of the two TCP connections). Over high latency links, it can take minutes to download all of the objects of a web page. Sometimes, a web browser can issue several requests for the objects of a web page and time out before all of the objects are downloaded since the objects download at a maximum rate of one at a time over each of the two TCP connections.